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| REV Bible | | |
“Wicked One.” The Greek is poneros (#4190 πονηρός), “pertaining to being morally or socially worthless; therefore, ‘wicked, evil, bad, base, worthless, vicious, and degenerate.’”a
Poneros is an adjective, but it is a substantive (an adjective used as a noun). A good example of a substantive in English is the adjectives in the well-known Clint Eastwood movie, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” The adjectives “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” refer to people (“good people,” “bad people,” “ugly people”), and thus they function as nouns even though they are adjectives.
The Slanderer is the fount and foundation of wickedness. It was in him that wickedness was first found when he was lifted up with pride and decided to rebel against God. Ever since that time, he has been true to his name, “the Wicked One,” and has been doing and causing wickedness wherever he can, which, since he is “the god of this age,” is a considerable amount of wickedness.
[For more on substantives, see the commentary on Matt. 5:37.]
[For more on the names of the Slanderer (the Devil) and their meanings, see Appendix 14: “Names of the Devil.”]
[“For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”] There are some manuscripts that have this longer reading at the end of Matthew 6:13. However, most of those manuscripts are ninth or tenth century or later, the earliest being the fifth century (Washingtonianus), and all of the Syriac manuscripts. Yet, the earliest and best manuscripts do not have this longer reading, and thus, following the Nestle Aland 28th edition, this reading has not been included in the REV.
In textual criticism, typically the shorter reading is the correct one, and the textual evidence supports that this is what happened in Matthew 6:13. It is more likely that scribes added in a longer ending to the prayer than that they took out this long ending, because the longer ending does not teach anything that would be controversial that would cause scribes to omit it. Almost all modern versions have the shorter reading (e.g., ASV, CSB, CEB, ESV, Mounce, NAB, NASB2020, NET, NIV, NRSV, RSV).